NO REST: On the phone to an aide between appointments
Posted Sunday, May 30, 2004; 14:48 BST SATAKUNTA:THE HOME FRONT
"Saakeli!" Kauppi spits out the untranslatable Finnish curse through gritted teeth, her face flushing. The swear word brings a half-smile to the face of aide Henri Hirvenoja, who's driving his boss to meet constituents in Satakunta, a region on Finland's southwest coast, 200 km from Helsinki. Kauppi was supposed to be in the town of Kankaanpää 15 minutes ago. But a missed turn and bad directions mean she's still some 40 km away. "We're going to be so late, some of them probably won't vote for me because of this," Kauppi says.
Finnish M.E.P.s all represent the entire country, so in the average workweek Kauppi spends four days in Brussels, a day in Helsinki, a day at home — Oulu, in northern Finland — and a day visiting constituents elsewhere in the country. As the car finally pulls in to Kankaanpää, she checks her makeup and puts on her game face. Kokoomus supporters have set up a table in the outdoor market with coffee and cakes — no champagne. "I try to explain that the idea of Europe is not just an economic tool," Kauppi says. "I try to talk up the philosophy behind the Union, because I think the idea is much more noble. The higher purpose is peace among the people of this continent."
Peace is nice, but in Satakunta, where unemployment is 13.4%, people want to talk about jobs and E.U. subsidies. "I'm already not happy with the lines the E.U. has drawn," says a worried farmer, regarding levels of agricultural subsidies, as he confronts Kauppi at the market stall. He's concerned that, with E.U. enlargement, the funding he depends on will shrink even further. Kauppi assures him she intends to guard the interests — and subsidies — of small family farms like his.
Kauppi encounters far more indifference than anger among voters. "People just think the E.U. and the European Parliament are not important," says Juha Lehtinen, a Kokoomus leader in Huittinen, 80 km south of Kankaanpää. On a visit to a vocational institute there, Kauppi tries to bring the E.U. closer to home, but her efforts don't always register. As she tells a class of mostly 20- to 22-year-olds what an M.E.P. does, the students whisper and doodle in their notebooks. When Kauppi asks if they know who Finland's E.U. commissioner is, she is met with silence. As she talks about programs to study in other E.U. states, a baseball-capped student gnaws on one of the copies of the Charter of Fundamental Rights that Kauppi has handed out. "You know what?" she says later in her car, undeterred by their apathy. "Being in the Parliament has made me more idealistic. I know things can get done. But idealism without a cause has no meaning. It has to make you do something."
Which is why, even as she's late for her next meeting and her aides are trying to get her out the door of a Huittinen coffee shop, she ignores them and strides, hand outstretched, over to a table of three elderly men. "Piia-Noora Kauppi," she says, as they look up from their coffee cups to her bright, hopeful smile. "Member of the European Parliament." Kauppi may be young, but she's experienced enough to know that every vote counts.
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